Birchwood Grove CP School

Year Two

Hello everyone, and welcome to Year 2 at Birchwood Grove!

We will use this page to share planning, homework and anything else useful. 

Click on the links for the Year 2 objectives in Maths, Reading, Writing & Science (core subjects). 

Click here for our Meet the Teacher information. 

 

Autumn Term 2024

Click here for our planning for the Autumn Term. 

 

Growth Mind Set

 

 

Our first two weeks in Year 2 will be focus on growth mind set! We are using the text 'The Emotional Menagerie' to inspire our thinking about feelings. We explored lots of different emotions and then each chose an emotion to complete our own writing and paint a matching picture to create our own Oak and Elm Class Emotional Menageries! We used the artwork in the menagerie to inspire our own artwork, recapping over the primary and secondary colours and then using them to create our own painting to represent our emotion.

           

We also focused on our school rights and values to create our class charter, class agreement and explore our zones of regulation. We set up our new class environments and thought about how we keep ourselves and others safe, ensuring we are ready for learning and what to do when we are not feeling as regulated. We then applied our understanding of how to stay safe to establish how we stay safe online and creating 'top tips' for our classroom. In Maths, we have been looking at place value and exploring tens and ones! 

 

Change, Cause & Consequence

 

 

 

Our concepts for the Autumn term are Change, Cause & Consequence and our focus subject is History!

For the rest of the first Autumn half term, we will be focused on our learning about The Great Fire of London. We will explore this moment in history, whilst answering our enquiry question 'How have events in the past changed how we live now?'. We will discover about Samuel Pepys and use his diary entries as sources of evidence to learn about the fire and life in 1666. We plan to end our learning by re-creating our own 'Great Fire' and having a visit from a theatre group!

                           

 

GFOL houses Y2

 

 

In the second half of Autumn term, we will be focused on The Titanic. We will continue to answer our enquiry question 'How have events in the past changed how we live now?'. We will find out about the people on the ship, the conditions on the fateful day in 1912 and the legacy that it left behind.               

                                 

 

Throughout the term, we explored collage and paint to create our own London skylines and paintings of the Titanic demonstrating contrasting colours. We used our artwork of the Titanic and Benjamin Britten's 'Dawn' and 'Storm' to inspire each part of our composition. We identified and classified everyday materials, helping us to decide on the materials for our 'Tudor' houses. We learnt about addition and subtraction and looked at the properties of shape. We learnt about 'IT around us', about the UK and it's seas, discovered about our physical health and of course put on a fantastic nativity!

What a brilliant Autumn term in Year 2!

 

Spring Term 2025

Click here for our planning for the Spring Term. 

 

Belonging & Diversity 

 

 

Our concepts for the Spring term are Belonging & Diversity and our focus subjects are the Arts!

Our enquiry question for Spring will be: 'Is it important to belong?'. We are going to use 'The Climbers' by Ali Standish to inspire our answer to our question and think about how we create a sense of belonging ourselves. 

                         

 We are then going to use 'Bloom' by Anne Booth to help us think about what around us helps us to feel belonging. 

               

 

 

Homework

Please see below the expectations for homework in Year 2:

 

Reading Records

Don't forget to read at home, either with an adult or independently- try to aim to do this five times a week. Record your reading in your 'Home Reading Record'. Each week, if you have completed your five entries, you will be entered into the half-termly raffle draw!

Spelling Shed

New spelling lists will be posted on Spelling Shed each week for you to practice independently- how many can you get correct? Can you be this week's Top Bee? We would like the children to have a go at playing 3 games of spelling shed each week. The spellings will be set on a Wednesday and will follow our spelling pattern focused on in class. 

NumBots & TTRS (Times Table Rock Stars)

NumBots and TTRS area great way of improving your mental maths! NumBots recaps over key Maths facts and enabling them to be fluent in number facts to help them in all areas of their learning. In the Summer term we will start using TTRS to start the children ready for Key Stage Two by practicing counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. A couple of games on NumBots a week would be fantastic and if there are any areas the children are finding tricky please let us know. 

My Maths

The children will be set an activity to complete on My Maths each week that is linked to our Maths learning. 

 

Help at home

Reading 

Remember, you should be reading at least five times a week. 

Click here for books recommended for Year 2, which are part of our 100 book challenge!

 

Maths- Number Facts 

Please play NumBots and Times Tables Rock Stars. How quick can you get?

https://numbots.com/

https://ttrockstars.com/ 

     

Hit the Button- This game helps your number fluency and speed of recall (number bonds and times tables facts). 

My Maths will give the opportunity for the children to practice the Maths we have been learning in school at home.

https://www.mymaths.co.uk/ 

 

Maths Fluency Sheets

We will complete our fluency sheets weekly. Please refer to the home versions below: 

Bronze

Silver

Gold

 

Spelling

 Play Spelling Shed as part of your homework! Don't forget to also practice the common exception words within our words of the week. 
https://www.spellingshed.com/en-gb/ 
Click here for the Year 1 common exception words.
Click here for the Year 2 common exception words. 
Please refer to the Oxford Owl website for more information about phonics and spelling:
https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/english/primary-spelling/spelling-year-2-age-6-7/